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Nest Is Buying Dropcam To Get More Data On The Home

Looks like all those rumors turned out to be true. Nest is acquiring video monitoring company Dropcam for $555 million as part of Nest’s push further into the home.

Announced Friday afternoon, the cash deal will enable Nest to gather more detailed information about its users’ behavior–and improve the intelligence of its own products like its learning thermostat.

Dropcam sells a $150 and $200 camera for home monitoring as well as an optional cloud recording service for $99 a year. With the cloud service, users can receive activity notifications straight to their smartphones.

“Eventually, the plan is for us to work together to reinvent products that will help shape the future of the conscious home and bring our shared vision to more and more people around the world,” Nest cofounder Matt Rogers said in a company blog post.

One of Dropcam’s plans is to track doors openings and closing, according to the Wall Street Journal. Being able to gather such detailed information such as whether a door is opened or closed would vastly improve Nest’s intelligence about what’s going on in the home.

Currently, Nest’s data collecting abilities are slightly hindered. Its learning thermostat is limited to a single motion detector, so the company only knows if you’re home when you walk in front of the thermostat or if you tell it through the smartphone app.

Nest also makes the Nest Protect, its smart smoke and carbon monoxide detector, which comes with a motion sensor and hooks up to the thermostat, but can’t offer the same kind of intelligence about a home that camera monitoring could potentially bring.

And Nest’s move into home monitoring is an obvious one. Although the Nest Protect is primarily touted as a smart smoke and carbon monoxide detector, it’s clear it can become a lot more. According to the Nest Protect product page, “a new Nest Protect that works with wired security systems is already on its way.” (The “learn more” link goes to a nonexistent page.)

When a potential Dropcam purchase first surfaced late last month, many people weren’t comfortable with the idea of a company like GoogleGoogle, which bought Nest for $3.2 billion earlier this year, getting access to cameras in the home.

Nest seems sensitive to this kind of concern with Matt Rogers writing, “Like Nest customer data, Dropcam will come under Nest’s privacy policy, which explains that data won’t be shared with anyone (including Google) without a customer’s permission. Nest has a paid-for business model and ads are not part of our strategy. In acquiring Dropcam, we’ll apply that same policy to Dropcam too.”

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Yes, Google bought Nest, but Dropcam will be folded into Nest. When Google bought Nest, the two companies explained that Nest will operate as an independent unit–and that separation includes keeping the data Nest collects on its users away from its data hungry owner. Of course, it remains to be seen how long this will last.

Yes Aaron, I think there is service revenue model around home security, so hopefully Google won’t start overlaying ads over the video feed, or let telemarketers know when you are at home. :)

I do think this is a smart acquisition for Google to get them into the home automation and security market. Actual makes me think whether acquiring Nest was such a good idea, beyond buying a few good engineers.

I actually think they bought Dropcam to kick start their home automation so they can compete with Apple. http://robovue.com/2014/06/21/dropcam-did-google-just-buy-their-version-of-apples-homekit/

Now Dropcam bought by google exactly like these venture capitals planned in 2013, when they initially did the 30 million dollar funding. Google is paying crazy amount of money for the company – as planned. They all are neighbors , friends and live in the same area. it looks like only same group of people buying ( venturing) and selling . the same group of people control where internet future shall go.

it looks like there is no risk for being a venture capital in that part of world. something is wrong !

Is that a bad thing? I don’t necessarily think it is. Is there a potential issue with it? Of course if they have privacy issues. The question is how will they use the data? Will it be fodder for creating a better smart environment? Will it prove instrumental in moving forward what Cisco defines as the Internet of Everything?